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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

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Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#191

Post by thiht »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #118
socketcluster wrote: post #116

The name Phoenix is overused. There is an Elixir framework called Phoenix. I think I also heard of other projects with that same name before. It's a bit like the name 'Apollo'; besides the moon landing project, I know like 2 dev projects called that and also there is a sales SaaS platform with that name. Surely people should run a search first before choosing a name...

From the ashes of some previous project is born some new project . It's symbolic. I remember people naming new software projects this back in the 1980s for the same reason.

We get the symbolic reason. It’s still overused and lazy because it doesn’t even relate to the project itself except for its origin in the most generic way.

They could at least use PhoenX or FenX to link it with X

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#192

Post by jbverschoor »

grim_io wrote: post #76
iamnothere wrote: post #34

This is the kind of initiative I’d prefer to see from X preservationists. Great job, I hope it succeeds. I prefer Wayland, but there’s still a place in the world for X; it just needs new dev teams to shoulder the burden.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

I’d love to have a proper x11.

Run gui apps in your container, local or remote.

Perfect

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#193

Post by ggdG »

dismalaf wrote: post #127
vidarh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the server/compositor. Not for the client, or if you want to write a wm and is forced to write a compositor. And actually I'm not even even convinced about the server if talking about a minimal server like this that insists on DRI/GBM, and ditches all the old rendering cruft.

So build on top of wlroots or something. DWL for example is super small...

Current status:

> 2025-08-16: dwl IS CURRENTLY UN-MAINTAINED. AT THE PRESENT TIME, I (@fauxmight) DO NOT HAVE THE TIME OR CAPACITY TO KEEP UP WITH wlroots CHANGES.

https://codeberg.org/dwl/dwl

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#194

Post by extropy »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #160
sho_hn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on whether their reasons for "absolutely having to have X11" hinge on actual compatibility with e.g. old binaries or wanting full remoting without streaming pixels. This project would satisfy people who really actually want Wayland, but were upset by transitional pains or interactions they had around it and want to stick with X11 just-cause while getting some similar benefits. This arguably does describe s…

From my perspective X just got to the point where it just works for me few years ago and Wayland is just introducing more issues than it solves (to be clear it solves no current issue for me, only one that I think might be better for me is handling different refresh rate displays and maybe fractional scaling... and that could probably be done within X11) Like, why simple "copy the screen" got suddenly so complicated?…

Wayland design choices are heavily influenced by automotive and TV where it has been industry standard way before it became mostly usable as a desktop. And that has lead to design compromises that look odd on desktop.

But hey, you can probably run automotive UIs with your desktop compositor.

And Gnome devs are just being silly at this point.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#195

Post by YouAreWRONGtoo »

sho_hn wrote: post #11

Pretty interesting approach to make an X server that is essentially "Wayland-like" (merging display server/compositor by default, isolated apps by default, no remoting of GLX, dropping legacy protocol features to the point of breaking compat with the core protocol, etc.). Not sure who this is for, but by itself it looks like a fairly reasonable set of choices.

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Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#196

Post by eptcyka »

kelnos wrote: post #164
mathstuf wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per-display DPI settings. No snooping on input without permission. Awareness of the lock screen (the compositor can know that the lock screen is active and provide alternate keybindings instead of having to configure the lock application as well). Locking is not blocked by context menus being open. I ran XMonad for 15 years, but recently switched to river and am loving it.

You can do per-display DPI just fine on X11 (through xrandr), it's just the major toolkits don't support it. GTK, for example, reads a single global DPI value from XSETTINGS; there's no reason why it has to be that way. The annoying thing about the other things you mention is that they honestly are not that difficult to fix. The X server can throw an error (or just silently ignore it) when one client passes the windo…

If the issues are trivially resolved, why did the authors of X decided to abandon X? If the issues could be resolved, why were they not resolved? I am using wayland for more than 5 years now, it just works. X did not. Xscreensaver/lock screens on Qubes are still broken.

What features is Wayland the protocol missing to allow supporting Xfce?

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#197

Post by linuxhansl »

sho_hn wrote: post #11

Pretty interesting approach to make an X server that is essentially "Wayland-like" (merging display server/compositor by default, isolated apps by default, no remoting of GLX, dropping legacy protocol features to the point of breaking compat with the core protocol, etc.). Not sure who this is for, but by itself it looks like a fairly reasonable set of choices.

Tangentially related... Is it just me, but is Wayland still lagging behind X11? From things like window placement, night light, etc. Things seem to work just out of the box in X11, and there are always issues in Wayland.

(For me this is specifically on Fedora, and I always switch back to X11 from Wayland.)

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#198

Post by binarin »

MangoToupe wrote: post #46
redeeman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS, windows and macos cant even do proper window managing for a start, and then it just goes downwards from there on.. You can perhaps install various weird third party things, but it does not come with it by default. If you took people who absolutely never tried any computing, and gave them macos, windows, and for example Plasma, they would NOT consider windows or macos to be ready for the desktop. If you go 15 year…

[flagged]

There is at least one area where both macos and windows suck - handling window focus. MacOS is regularly having trouble with tracking focus across multiple monitors and multi-window apps, making it unusable with keyboard only. And Windows just loves to steal focus in the most inappropriate moments.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#199

Post by sho_hn »

extropy wrote: post #194
PunchyHamster wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective X just got to the point where it just works for me few years ago and Wayland is just introducing more issues than it solves (to be clear it solves no current issue for me, only one that I think might be better for me is handling different refresh rate displays and maybe fractional scaling... and that could probably be done within X11) Like, why simple "copy the screen" got suddenly so complicated?…

Wayland design choices are heavily influenced by automotive and TV where it has been industry standard way before it became mostly usable as a desktop. And that has lead to design compromises that look odd on desktop. But hey, you can probably run automotive UIs with your desktop compositor. And Gnome devs are just being silly at this point.

This car runs KDE Plasma's KWin, along with many other Mercedes-Benz models currently launching:

https://youtu.be/wo5As8et1G8

https://youtu.be/pqJ-9SUPFwY

Notably this deployment doesn't use any of the old-gen automotive Wayland cruft like ivi-shell though. It's pretty much the desktop stack now.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#200

Post by YouAreWRONGtoo »

shevy-java wrote: post #96
bigyabai wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, if you have to rewrite a display server implementation then you're already proving all the protocol advocates right.

Why? People complain that the YAML specification/protocol is too complex. This may be, but I found using YAML much, much easier and nicer than XML. So to me these two things are not necessarily interconnected. You can have a great implementation and a crappy protocol; but also a great protocol and a crappy implementation.

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